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A New Hampshire couple told a school board Monday that their son's civil rights were violated when he was assigned a book that refers Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."...   >>>

A New Hampshire couple told a school board Monday that their son's civil rights were violated when he was assigned a book that refers Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."

The 2001 book, "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," documents author Barbara Ehrenreich's attempts to live on minimum wage as she critiques the nation's economic system.

Aimee and Dennis Taylor complained about the book's foul language, descriptions of drug use and characterization of Christianity when it was assigned to their son's personal finance class at Bedford High School in the fall and later pulled him out of school at his request. On Monday, they asked the school board to remove the book from the curriculum and create a committee of parents to review and rate all other books used in the school, but the board held off on making a decision until it hears from its curriculum committee next month.

In a "Q&A" section on her blog, Ehrenreich denies that the passage insults Jesus and points out that the book has won a Christopher Award, given by a Catholic group to recognize books that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit."

"In the section at issue, I observed that the social teachings of Jesus went utterly unmentioned at the tent revival I attended. The revival preachers clearly preferred the dead and risen Christ to the living Jesus — who did indeed drink wine and could even make it out of water," she wrote. "As for the vagrancy charge: that's what he was, a homeless, itinerant preacher."

The board's vice-chairwoman, Cindy Chagnon, said she agreed the book might not be appropriate for a personal finance course but said she viewed the comments about Jesus as positive.

"Her underlying point is not prejudiced against religion. She's saying Christ is a living, breathing lesson for us, let's listen to what he says," she said. "I think this doesn't necessarily belong in personal finance ... but I would not hold anyone on our staff accountable for choosing a bad book. It teaches lessons of the human spirit."